Principles: Whenever it starts is the right time & When it's over it's over

We're going to be engaged in some creative work here. And the one thing I know about creative work is that it doesn't work on the clock. Inspiration can come at any time and often the worst thing is to say something like "It's one-fifteen - time for some creative action!".

We will have a schedule, a plan for the time available and some things will happen at fixed times (we won't have access to the room before 10.30 and we'll leave by 17:30 for example) but we know that creative conversations sometimes take longer or shorter amounts of time than we think. So be gentle with yourself and others if you think that something should have happened already. We're all in this together. Whenever it starts is the right time, whether that's the day itself or the conversation that you said you'd have straight after this one.

But

When it's over it's over

We all want to make the most of the time we have together.

If you've called a session and it turns out that you could get done what you wanted to do within ten minutes, then great! you can get on with something else. Lots of the meetings we have outside of this space are time-fillers. It's scheduled from 11.30 to 12.30 so that's how long it lasts. We work the opposite way here.

Of course there are some conversations that need to go on a bit longer than planned or need to turn into something else. This is OK too. If there are people who were scheduled to use the space you're in, let them in and go off and continue your conversation somewhere else until it really is over.

Photo Credit: Justin Pickard on Flickr CC BY-SA